Persuasive Essay: Why Win?

Why Win? To compete, as defined by the New Century Dictionary, is “To contend with another for some prize or advantage” (“compete”[Volume 1][Page 294]). The question of what competition is has been settled for centuries, but the debate over what the point of competition is continues to this day. Thoughts on this topic usually fall into one of two categories. There are those who would agree with Henry Russell Sanders’s famous statement that, “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” and there are those who would agree with Vince Lombardi, who stated, “Winning isn’t everything, but the desire to win is.” The attitude Vince Lombardi epitomizes is by far the healthier mindset to take regarding competition.
Much more important than the

When an individual or group of individuals is made to feel as if the only thing that truly matters is the final outcome, then that will be their only focus. An example could be found while observing Girl Scouts. One of the most visible functions of the Girl Scouts organization is its annual cookie sale. If two girls from the same general area were to follow the path society has paved for them, they would end up fighting over rights to certain streets causing them both to take in a diminished number orders. Had the girls worked together, they both could have done quite well. A secondary example would be a scandal occurred when it was discovered that almost a dozen teachers in the Atlanta, Georgia, public education system had cheated on their students standardized testing. The teachers were under pressure to produce high scores, and when they could not accomplish that goal in a righteous manner, they turned to forgery and deceit instead. Neil deGrasse Tyson once said, “When Students [sic] cheat on exams it’s because our School System [sic] values grades more than Students [sic] value learning” (deGrasse Tyson). Although Mr. Tyson refers to students, the same could be said of teachers and testing scores. Education is not all about objective examinations of material retained, but when focus is only put upon doing the best, then only objective data can fulfill the need. Students who cheat and teachers who fake test results are not the only casualties of this societal outlook though. Society needs to find a healthier standard to judge others than by simply the end